In every church in Revelation there is the call to overcome. And it is “he who overcomes”—ongoing process, not category. This applies to all—those in the Lc and those not; those in the lead and those not. Woe to those who sit on their laurels. But woe also to those who criticize more than they pray when facing degradation. We are not unaware of the enemy and his stratagems...

A member should be received, beard or no beard. A member who wants to serve on a service will have fellowship with the Lord and then with the other members of the group. If things go according to (the Lord’s) plan, transformation will happen for all involved—grain ground against grain to produce the loaf (salt, the cross plus oil, the Spirit, also needed).

We can all testify that are also many anecdotes (now this seems not the right word) that are further along in the experience of life—not just putting off of makeup (that’s from the early section, maybe being delivered from the world) but being cut up in the very fiber of one’s natural constitution, the source of which cutting will seem like this fleshly person in the church or that infuriating matter in the church—it will not seem very divine at all, and it will almost be impossible to put into words, because it touches the very core of your being and you are being reduced to nothing so Christ can be everything and you can be buildable and not merely spiritual. The piece of wood being cut not because it’s bad but because it needs to be a doorframe. The rice being cooked not because it’s bad or wrong but because it’s raw and needs cooking to be a source of food.The messy kitchen of the church life, where the garms are in all the fallen being of every member (leading ones included) but at least you got warned (or enlightened) in message after message that this is what the Lord will do to you—perform surgery on your contaminated person—if you keep taking this way. The instrument will be blunt and it will often be the other members. Yet somehow there is the supply, now not only from the Lord only but from the other members, and you appreciate the Christ in them, even the very legal ones, and the Lord shows you your non-legality may be your own form of legality imposed on others and not Christ. But you keep contacting the Lord (He may come to you again and again, but why not just stay in contact with Him if you can?), let Him impart His essence into you via the cross. He then shows you these things—sometimes directly from the Word but also from the ministry and there is an echo in your being because it explains what is happening to you and it makes you love the Lord more each passing day, month, year. And He exhorts you to pray against the degradation in the church (how could there not be—it’s in the Word) and for the rekindling of the first love for everyone He puts on your heart.